Why Is Online Reputation Important For Small Business

“I provide the best customer service and that is enough to build my reputation”, is how every business man wants their business to be. But the era we live in, where consumers pull the shots and play a vital role in making or breaking your online reputation. Just a bit of

Just a bit of discomfort and they take it to social media, leaving you a 1-star or a 2-star review which affects your business negatively. A negative reputation can easily kill your business overnight, and diminish all the hard work you put into building your business.

A negative reputation can easily kill your business overnight.

Although reputation is an intangible concept but still it is a fact that good reputation always increases corporate worth and provides a lasting competitive advantage. A business can easily achieve sustainable growth if it has a good reputation among its customers. Nowadays the digital world has stilted everything under its control, people tend to see and spread the opinions online, for all to see.

If we rewind back to the days before Internet, the reputation of business was based mostly on word of mouth which had a very limited reach. Therefore it is very important to know online reputation in deep, and how to manage it. Let’s start with the basic definition of Online Reputation Management.

What is Online Reputation Management?

In the Digital Sphere Online Reputation Management refers to the monitoring of the reputation of an individual or brand and a process to control what shows up when someone looks up online.

It is very necessary to keep your business safe from negative reviews. There are many tools companies can use to notify about negative stories by setting up alerts and monitoring negative stories.

Why is Online Reputation Management important?

How your product is described online, directly impacts your business career. Items that are described negatively can damage even your build reputation. There are 4 reasons why building online reputation is that important.

1. People judge your business based on your reviews

If we take a simple example: Every Day over one billion names are searched on Google search engine, imagine if job recruiters are looking for a potential employee online they will check the person’s profile on every social site and call them up making judgments about what they find. It is the same scenario for your products/services if people find single strong negative feedback their mind automatically gives confused statements like “Should I even waste my money on this”.

72% of Internet Users trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. People are highly into reviews. Right from the mobile, they are planning to buy the shampoo they are using, they buy the product only if they find positive reviews on it. Therefore if you are not doing anything to help your product/services get positive reviews on it, it’s not going to sell fast enough.

Also, if you are not stopping negative reviews for your business then you are bound to lose potential business.

2. Provides insight on your business

If you happen to post something indifferent may be regarding politics, your sad breakup or anything, you cannot turn off the gossips on you in social media Similarly, if your business

Happen to be a part of some negative story then there is a lot that is part of a stake from a business point of view. A good reputation can help you positively in your business.

A good reputation can help you positively in your business.

Those were the days when issues really never mattered due to limited sources but today people are ready to do anything to maintain their reputation as there are unlimited sources that can destroy your reputation easily. Maintaining a stable relationship with everybody is not really easily so there are chances you get a negative story somewhere for something that you can locate and remove using many Online Reputation tools.

3. Builds Trust

Social Media has given an opportunity to all its users to share their opinions about anything anywhere. People just take it social media and businesses and even public figures are getting trolled at for no reason.

If your company has a negative story somewhere then it is likely to spread like a wildfire. Positive reviews online naturally built trust in people.

4. Increases Sales

It is very obvious if people trust your brand than your products can be sold easily. Customers or Investors are totally depending on Google reviews. Social media and search engines have turned out to be an important marketing strategy. Whether your business is new or old you have to strengthen the strategies to build the online presence.

What is the business you searched in the last 12 months? According to the survey conducted in 2010, from 19 possible choices the most searched businesses were:

This proves that more and more people are searching for local business online and that means while finding what they get is more important. They even admitted that 65% of people read between 2 and 10 reviews about the business and makes a judgment. Online reputation management is very important to drive new business and customer sales.

Conclusion

It is very clear how Online Reputation Management has become an important strategy to gain Online Reputation boost credibility. Brands should not only be managing but actively working towards improving and developing their online reputation.

Brands are growing quickly as the Internet is changing and digital content is ruling. Search engines are connected to each other like strings with a brand’s reach and awareness that business owners are required to stay competitive by taking few other strategies to brand development like:

3 Comments

Now a days the number of people doing online business are increasing and the competition has gone more fierce in every niche, So maintining a good online reputation is of ultimate importance for your business for a simple reason because it would help you to drive in more customer, more trust , more leads and in turn more business. You can maintain a good online reputation by sharing good and meaningful content, solving people queries and be more interactive in every way you can to grow your business.

They’re a part of a web hosting biz that does SEO, so my understanding is that they have access to all sorts of web sites where they can add positive information about a person or company, and link to other sites with the same positive info. So they can raise other pages up in search results to replace the pages that display “bad” info about you or your business.

One important thing I learned is that *NO* one (including the place I mentioned above) can quickly get rid of bad search results listings in Google. It’s a process, and takes a bit of time. If you encounter anyone who says they can “expedite” things for an extra cost or fee, you’d probably be best to run away. It just doesn’t work that way.